Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people. (Luke 1:25 ESV) The mother of John, the Baptist, said this when she, in her old age, became pregnant with the herald that would proclaim the arrival of a new millennia. You see, Elizabeth’s reproach was that she and her husband had no children and this fact implied two things according to old wives tales and baseless religious superstition of that day: 1) the family is cursed and therefore no retirement plan was made available; 2) the family was hiding an atrocious sin and God was punishing them. Neither of those two things were true. In fact, God had a better plan for them. God saw this reproach of Elizabeth and decided He would turn those baseless lies everybody murmured beneath their breath at her family upside down by allowing her the miracle of life. Jesus later calls John, Elizabeth’s son, the great man birthed of a woman to ever live. This Christmas season may have winded you out and completely drained your life. But rest assured that it is only a reminder of how God has taken away our faults, failures, mistakes, and shame through the arrival of Jesus, our Christ. God may be working in your life right now to flip things upside down if we allow Him todo so. It doesn’t matter what you’re hiding behind closed doors; it doesn’t even matter who you are hiding it from. What matters is who you allow into your life to redeem those things. As we head into Christmas weekend and soon after Christmas, let us seriously consider the gravity of what God has done for us and be joyful. And if you can’t remember or think of what God has done for you, I ask that you look more closely, you’ll be surprised. I hope to see you at church on Sunday for our 10:30am or 1:30pm service and our Christmas Eve Service on Monday at 8pm.